Jeremy Bursich demonstrates 'The Art of Letting Go'

After dropping his first album only a year ago, contemporary folk singer-songwriter Jeremy Bursich avoided resting on his laurels with the release of his latest project, “The Art of Letting Go.”

Andre Lamar

After dropping his first album only a year ago, contemporary folk singer-songwriter Jeremy Bursich avoided resting on his laurels with the release of his latest project, "The Art of Letting Go."

The new album is available at CDBaby.com. A limited supply of physical copies of "The Art of Letting Go" are being sold at the Dover Newsstand & Café located at 25 W. Loockerman St.

Bursich, 26, of Dover, sat down with the Dover Post to discuss his new album (released last Wednesday), which is more hopeful than his first effort, "The Dark Years."

Q Is "The Art of Letting Go" a sequel to "The Dark Years?"A My music's autobiographical. I find it very difficult to write about things I haven't experienced, so it kind of goes through chronological order. "The Dark Years" is stuff I wrote four or five years ago that was, as the title says, a lot darker. It was a lot more morbid; it had more of an annalistic point of view on life. "The Art of Letting Go" is kind of further down that evolutionary process where some growth has occurred and some different things have taken place in my life. I was able to learn from them and write about them in the process. The songs are still pretty introspective, but not as dark.

Q As the title implies, what are some of the things you're letting go of?A Behavioral patterns and ways of life that hold me back or slow me down. I used to have a drug problem and I have an extensive history of drug abuse, and there have been all kinds of things that have hindered me and kept me from moving forward in life; that's basically what this album is about: it's a proclamation of divorce from that lifestyle. It's me saying "I'm moving on. I'm going places and I'm doing things; I'm not about [drugs] anymore and I don't want to be a part of it anymore."

Q How long have you been sober?A I've been sober for three-and-a-half years.

Q Congratulations. Now that you're able to stand back and look at the finished product, what are you most impressed with, with "The Art of Letting Go?"A More than anything, I'm proud of how it came together as a whole because I had to manage all these bits and pieces and I've never done anything like that before. Going into this six months ago, I didn't know anything about promotion, marketing, advertising, production, mixing and mastering; and I knew very little about recording.

Q Explain how recording was virtually a new experience for you if your first album was self-recorded.A For the first album, I just had my wife's MacBook and it came standard with an internal microphone and that's what I recorded everything with. This time I used a condenser mic, acoustic paneling, studio headphones and professional production software. So I had to learn how to use it all.

Q In the end, what's been the "art" to giving up your drug addiction?A There comes a point in your life when it basically boils down to a choice: you either change or you die. It got pretty drastic and pretty intense and it was time for things to change. I had gotten in some trouble; I was on probation. The probation officer came looking for me and I went to an inpatient treatment facility and got off the streets for a little while and got cleaned up, then I came out. I started doing what I had to do, what I knew were the right things to do, and I stopped hanging out with all the people I got high with, and started making new friends.